No one should need an extra reason to visit Bright, a true four season destination in the Victorian High Country: winters perfect for snowsports; springs and autumns that explode with colour; year round adventure sports and gourmet food and wine trails. But if you did need another reason, the Bright Brewery fits the bill...
Set in the heart of the Alpine town on the edge of the crystal clear Ovens River, it's the perfect spot to unwind. On offer is everything from their citrusy Blowhard Pale ' ideal after a hard day's hiking or cycling the Murray to the Mountains Rail Trail ' to a full-bodied Staircase Porter ' as comforting as a warm blanket on cooler winter days.
Set up in 2006 by Scott Brandon and Fiona Reddaway who had left Melbourne behind for a change of pace, Bright has gone on to pick up a swag of tourism awards; pint in hand, gazing on the tree-covered surrounding mountains as the river burbles nearby, you'll soon understand why.
The brewery plays host to regular live music on Sunday afternoons, while anyone keen to find out more about their Mountaincrafted beers can sign up for one of Bright's monthly "Brewer for a Day" packages: spend a day behind the scenes with the brewer making a full 1200 litre batch all the way from mashing the grain to decanting it to the fermenter. Just don't forget to return a few weeks later to taste the result straight from the tap.
In late 2012, the brewery completed a million dollar expansion program. This tripled the venue's size, introducing much-needed additional indoor seating, resulting in one of the most impressive microbrewery bar / restaurants in the country. There's a long bar pouring their full range of beers, massive dining area lined with wooden tables, outdoor seating front and back and cool use of old kegs for everything from lights to sinks in the toilets. The expansion has continued, with a terrace now stretching out towards the river.
The expansion means more place for the brewers to play in. From 2011 until late 2014, this fell to Jon Seltin, the young brewer who set about filling it with his range of specialty releases and barrel-aged experiments that turned heads among craft beer aficionados wherever they landed. After Jon moved to take on another head brewer role in Melbourne, the brewery was taken over by former Southern Bay and BrewDog brewer, the massively bearded Ryan Tyack, before the baton passed to English brewer Rich Chamberlain and later America's Reid Stratton.
The brewery opened a second production facility in early 2018, with the intention of re-entering the wider beer market outside its home region as well as producing more short run and innovative beers. It also followed up a series of successes at the state level by claiming Silver in the Australian Tourism Awards in February 2018.
